ok, this is not a poem, but it is a quote from a work we have in our very own librivox library:

Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)

* All the great utterances of man have to be judged not by the letter but by the spirit ? the spirit which unfolds itself with the growth of life in history.
o Preface

* The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiences of great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system of logical interpretation. They have to be endlessly explained by the commentaries of individual lives, and they gain an added mystery in each new revelation.

Ham.
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your
players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do
not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all
gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a
temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the
soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to
tatters, to very rags, to split the cars of the groundlings, who,
for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb
shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing
Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you avoid it.

I Player.
I warrant your honour.

Ham.
Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your
tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with
this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of
nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing,
whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as
'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own image,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his
form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though
it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious
grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance,
o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I
have seen play,--and heard others praise, and that highly,--not
to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of
Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's
journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated
humanity so abominably.

I Player.
I hope we have reform'd that indifferently with us, sir.

Ham.
O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns
speak no more than is set down for them: for there be of them
that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren
spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary
question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous
and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go
make you ready.

I find that poem almost perfect ... the way the author uses "cookie" imagery to subversively highlight at once the importance of gaining knowledge/information ("in my mouth"), but also it's elusiveness/crumbliness. And the commentary on our institutions of information and knowledge dissemination - universities, big media (print and electronic), the publishing industry - is almost too perfect: the "package." Why, indeed, does knowledge come "all in one piece" within the "package" of the Official Gatekeepers of knowledge, and yet, once it is democratized through tools such as libraries and the internet, we see that knowledge is not in fact uniform, but rather "crumbles" into many different, and equally compelling knowledges. some see that as dangerous (for instance the DRM lobby, mainstream media), but does "crumbly" knowledge really taste any different than the packacked whole? or is it just as sweet? perhaps even sweeter for its very crumbliness - in fact isn't it the crumbliness of knowledge that allows us to chew it, and digest it? what if that knowledge was force (for instance thru DRM) to stay in one piece, inside it's wrapper? what good would it be then.

and lets not forget the sharing aspect, an underlying principle of LV, and clearly one of the driving metaphors of the poem: a packaged "big and round" (ie platonic sphere, ie idealized perfection) can be held by one hand at once only (a controlling, possessive hand is implied), yet "crumbled" cookie/knowledge can be distributed among many, can be *shared* ...

In fact I feel that this poem, (written when?), presaged the Internet, and projects like LibriVox, where finally through technological innovation, and though the desire to share information, society for the first time can not only find and sort thru all human knowledge (cookie), but can ALSO take this knowledge (cookie), through unlimited/free/ copying and distribution, crumble the cookie, and share it with all human kind.

This is something new, and the "narrator" of the poem -- a stand-in for everyman, sure that something is afoot, but not certain yet what all this means -- rightly asks: do you mean the cookie tastes just as good when not in the packet?

And this is the genius of the piece, where the everyman realizes that new distribution methods mean that knowledge can be disseminated everywhere for free ... "how come in the packet you're one big piece/ while in my mouth you;re crumbly?" (emphasis added). Why indeed, the "one big piece" argued for by DRM, Main Stream Media, the University system? Why the artificial "plastic packaging" of our information gatekeepers? Why not celebrate the crumbliness of knowledge, art, literature... why not, in effect, read a chapter for LibriVox?

(Or DEAR. that got a little out of hand. what time is it???? aargggg!)